Plague Bearer
by NickWraye
Summary: In the snows of Kislev, a priestess of Nurgle and her warrior companion make their way down towards the cities of human-kind...
1. Chapter 1

Just after dawn, a cold and lingering mist burrows a path through the highland plains, mingling with the grey smoke of burning thatch that's rising from below.

The plague-bearer places her staff of office down across a rock and sits cross-legged with a sigh, gazing out across the ridge and down towards the endless valleys that rest like squat white tumours beneath the mountain's shadow.

Behind her, Black Gruss grunts and crouches, his battered armour clanking in protest, and glares down at the frosted mud of the path.

"Three men," he says, and grimaces, "no bears. They're lancers, on horseback. Heavily armed or laden down with baggage. Riding fast through the night."

His thinning black hair is flecked with snow; he itches furiously at his scalp with one plate-coated hand, frowning.

"Of course," he says, "they could have bows."

He's no coward - although isn't that what all cowards tell themselves? - but he remembers the horse archers and their bows. He'll never forget them. The snow that muffled the clatter of their hooves, the arrows that fell through the white whirlwind in near-silence. The agonised, frightened braying of his troops as they scattered and stumbled in the crimson slush of their own comrades' blood and died. The one barbed arrow that caught between his breastplate and his codpiece, jamming his gut and making him shriek like a child.

"It's probably nothing we need to be concerning ourselves with," he says. "Not when we're so close."

He waits.

"Malory?"

The plague-bearer closes her eyes, and reaches out across the morning mists, winnowing down over the icy crags and over the still clear water that shimmers, into the sullen fields and dying harvests of a particularly cold winter, until she reaches the black smoke and the fires spreading across village rooftops and she can hear the screaming.

She opens her eyes and raises her woollen cowl.

"They're trying to stamp out something beautiful," she says.


	2. Chapter 2

The lancers - Vadim, Grigori, Afansy - are not men of passion.

It was for precisely this reason that the Boyar had chosen them, appealing first to their loyalty, secondly to their good sense - and thirdly, as he shuffled back and forth across the chilling marble floor of his hall in mink-fur slippers, to their fear.

"When winter arrives," he'd told them, "it shall wash away this dreadful sickness for us, and we shall have no need to sully our souls and burden our consciences with deaths of innocents. But until that day, how many more refugees will stumble in from the villages, seeking our aid and bringing our deaths with them instead, hm? We have heard that in Kislev there are leper camps forming outside the city walls, beating on the gates and terrifying the citizens. We cannot allow the inflicted to gather in such a manner, not so close to the border. All of you, my friends, know that in our country a plague may be more than just a plague. You know that it may be only the beginning of our people's troubles."

There is in the Boyar's house a window in the highest tower, left open even in the depths of freezing winter, facing north-east to the border and what lies beyond. The lancers did not need to be reminded.

It is said, and most often in a tone of respect, that the men of Kislev are unaccountably hardy and unwilling to compromise, as tough as ice and stone through centuries of conflicts with the beasts and the men who stalk the horrid wastes beyond their nation's boundaries.

The Boyar had tried to remind himself of that ideal when he told his lancers,

"Burn every village that suffers. Cut down any who flee. Do not allow the sickness to travel. If you are inflicted, do not return."

The lancers are hard men, but even so, as they herd the pleading, begging, weeping villagers into the old timber town-hall, barring the door behind them with a heavy beam of lumber, they avoid looking into any of their victims' eyes. The infected are pale and gaunt and horrid with swollen boils. It's a relief once they're inside, and out of sight, and you can only hear the screaming.

Afansy raises his flaming oil-rag torch, and hesitates only for a moment - squaring his shoulders as his comrades watch him - before putting it to the thatch of the roof. The straw's sodden with weeks of relentless snow and rain; it will take time and patience before the flame catches; just as with all of the others.

As he works, he shudders, his mailed shoulders quivering, then chokes out a hacking cough. His high feathered wing sways absurdly back and forth in its bindings. He glances around, raises his sabre-hand in a gesture of supplication, and calls back to them with a forced grin,

"Just the smoke, hey? Just the smoke."

There's a sudden, sustained screech of inhuman panic from the houses behind them that makes Grigori flinch; Vadim waves at him to be calm.

"It's the horses," he says. "The fire frightens them." And then, seizing his opportunity, he adds hastily, "I'll go and see to them."

Without waiting for their reactions, he turns and hurries away down the frosted dirt path that runs like a stream through the centre of the village.

With every hut he passes, he feels the heat from the blazing wood reaching out over the freezing morning air and stinging at his skin. He imagines himself roasting alive in the centre of one of them, the flesh sloughing from his bones, his eyeballs peeling back into desiccated buds.

Vadim halts.

The horses have stopped screaming.

He turns to go back, and only just manages to raise his sabre quickly enough to deflect the colossal broadsword as it comes swinging in towards his face.

He stumbles, tripping in the snow, and falls onto his back.

The man standing before him does not look sick, although his grey face is lined with the years and with old sour scars. His plated armour is not of Kislev make; well-worn and dented, painted black. A peculiar sigil, three pointed arrows and three perfect white circles, has been daubed across the chest.

Black Gruss raises the sword again with a soft grunt and slices downwards and this time the sabre falls out of Vadim's helpless fingers as the blade drives through his mail-coat and his ribcage and into his heart. Blood sprays out across the snow.

He leans forward, gazing into the dead man's petrified eyes, and whispers,

"This is the Vileblade. In the Steppes of Norsca, under a blood moon, it was consecrated in honour of the great god Nurgle. You were not the best man the blade has claimed, nor shall you be the last."

The corpse topples forwards like a helpless marionette as Black Gruss yanks the gore-soaked blade free.


	3. Chapter 3

"This is no use," Afansy says, clucking like an old maid. "They'll have a loghouse, somewhere hidden out of the snow. I say we take as much lumber as we can and pile it up around the-"

Grigori murmurs,

"Afansy…"

Afansy turns.

Sister Malory tugs her wool-lined robe fussily to one side. Slowly, with a palpable pleasure, she reaches down with one emaciated hand and unhooks the flail from her belt.

The spherical flail head, pocked with iron spikes, jerks downwards and catches on the end of its chain.

She smiles at them sweetly and begins to walk up through the snow towards them.

Grigori draws his sabre out from its scabbard.

"With me, brother, hey," he says, inching around to keep the peculiar cowled woman in view.

Afansy takes a step forward - and convulses, choking, coughing, bent almost double with searing pain.

He raises a hand to his mouth and it comes away bloodied.

"She's a witch," he howls. His eyes are filling with tears. He topples sideways into the snow, spluttering and spitting. "Grigori, she's a witch-"

Sister Malory begins to swing her flail from side to side, her lean and bony arms trembling under its weight. Her bright green eyes are alight with excitement.

Grigori takes another step forward, feints, and lunges.

He's astonished to see the cowled woman skip to one side, anticipating his swordmanship; he barely manages to avoid the spiked iron ball as it soars through the air towards his head.

She's laughing at him; he grinds his teeth and swings again, too hard this time, driven by his anger, and the flail chain comes tumbling through the air and wraps around his sabre with a clatter, tugging it out of his hand and sending it spiralling through the air.

"Afansy!" he yells, desperately, "Afansy, get up, damn you-" and snatches at the dagger in his belt.

Malory twists, careening madly forward under the flail's weight, and brings it spinning back around to embed in Grigori's face in a squelch of crushed flesh and brain and bone.

The lancer sways for a moment, and then falls.

He lands in the snow, gently twitching. The left side of his face has caved inwards, mushing forehead and eyeball into the base of his cheek. His lips move wordlessly, as if he's trying to speak.

Malory steps over him. She lifts the iron chain of the flail, loops it around his throat with both hands, and yanks it hard.

She pays no attention to the third lancer, coughing and wheezing in pain, who stumbles to his feet and dashes away through the snow.


	4. Chapter 4

Afansy chokes, spits blood, regains his balance, and staggers onwards. The dawn wind blows snow and smoke into his face and makes his eyes sting. His lungs feel as if they're drowning.

Once he trips over the fallen body of Vadim; he sobs, curses, and keeps running.

His horse, Grusha, is screaming with fear where he left her, rearing up against the hitching post; she calms a little, however, as he snatches at her mane, bracing his weight against hers, lifts a leg over, and hauls himself bodily up into the saddle.

"Ride, Grusha," he whispers, weeping in agony and in shame. "Ride for home." He kicks his heels in, and Grusha takes off.

He clings to her mane for dear life, his head rested against her neck, eyes closed, trying to endure the pain in his chest and the nausea in his stomach. The fields fall away, and the snowy plains return; it's only now that he dares to glance back behind him.

Nobody is following him; the burning village is a distant cluster of shapes on the far horizon, left safely behind.

"Thank Ursun," he thinks. "Praise be. I made it. Even if-"

He stops himself from finishing the thought.

Beneath him, Grusha shivers; she lets out a sudden whinny of discontent, and her pace begins to slacken.

"Easy, now," Afansy murmurs. "A long way to go yet."

He kicks his heels in and the horse redoubles her efforts.

"The woman," he thinks. "She put a spell on me; some kind of curse that made me fail. I need to find an apothecary. I need to get help, before the sun falls-"

Grusha moans, and falters; Afansy cries out, but she's no longer listening to him, veering sharply to the right, galloping off the path, her hooves begin to tangle perilously in gorse and bracken concealed beneath the heavy snowfall. He yells out, kicking at her, stop, stop, turn back.

The horse's leg catches in a pothole; she tumbles forward, and down, tossing her rider high up into the air.

A horrid smack of mail and bone as Afansy lands; the air goes all out of him. He wheezes, chokes, and vomits up blood.

Grusha is lying on her flank, half-buried in the tangled thicket just a few feet away, moaning in pain. Digging his hands into the snow, he tries to get to his feet again, yearning to go to her and help her up and ease her suffering. He slips, his foot catching at an awkward angle in the thick bracken, and falls back.

Her massive black eyes stare helplessly back at him.

Her belly, he realises with a stir of horror, is massively distended, swollen as if from pregnancy or with fat. It's stirring; shivering; growing.

"Grusha," he whispers desperately, "Can you hear me, girl? Everything will be fine. We'll be back home soon, in a warm stable, and you'll have a chance to feed. Do you hear me? Good thick straw and a hot bath for me and-"

Grusha's stomach explodes. The skin bursts outwards in every direction, releasing a great slopping wave of pale and wriggling worms out in every direction, riding upon the horse's spilling intestines. Grusha howls and kicks out wildly, trying to get up, dying slowly and struggling with every passing second.

Afansy lies back and closes his eyes, trying in vain not to listen to the screaming. He feels light-headed; almost as if he should be laughing at this grotesque and inexplicable joke.

He can't endure the writhing sickness in his own belly any longer; the unnatural carcer that's spreading outwards through his entire body, conquering everything, rotting whatever it touches. If he had the strength, he'd lift the dagger from his belt and plunge it into his own heart; end it all now, before he has a chance to endure any more pain or suffer the indignity of bursting open like poor Grusha.

If he had the strength.

But alas, Afansy is not quite dead by the time the wolves come.


	5. Chapter 5

By midday, the survivors of the village have salvaged whatever they can find from the ruins of their homes and set out for the nearest town - Trontbaad, a quarter of a league away. Those too sick from the plague to walk are carried in crude stretchers.

They'd kissed the robes of the delightful cowled woman who rescued them from the village hall, bestowing the superstitious blessings and the wards of their faithful household-spirits upon the hulking, scowling man in armour who broke down the door and set them free. It hardly mattered to them where the two strangers had come from; their arrival had been truly miraculous, and indicated the intervention of Ursun Himself.

There is talk of a doctor in Trontbaad, a medicine-man who might be able to provide some kind of cure. The survivors walk with a quiet intensity of purpose, and a renewed sense of hope.

None of them stop for one second to consider the plague-bearer's final words to them:

"Live, and fester."


End file.
